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The dozens of servants and guards who had been standing silently along the marble walls suddenly came alive with awestruck gasps and murmurs of admiration. Several clasped their hands to their chests or fanned themselves. A few pretended to faint.
One man did nothing.
“Ahem! Ruffian,” Briar scolded. “I don’t hear any oohing and aahing coming from under that dreary hood of yours.”
Ruffian the Blue, the most notorious bounty hunter alive, stood stoically between two bronze statues of dancing goddesses. “I’m not paid to ooh,” he said. “Or to aah.”
Briar scowled at him. “But I pay you to do a lot of other things, Grizzle Face,” she sneered. “And if you’d like to receive the gold you’re due for those tasks, I’d better start hearing some adoration.”
Ruffian took a deep breath. “Ooh,” he said flatly. “Aah.”
“You’re not impressing anyone, Briar,” Liam said.
“I beg to differ,” she said. She looked to her guards: “Men?”
“We’re impressed!” they all shouted in unison.
Liam shook his head. “I pity you, Briar. I can’t imagine how hollow I would feel if I knew that none of the praise or admiration I got was genuine.”
Briar’s eyes lit up. “You know what, Hubby-to-be?” she said. “Since you don’t seem to appreciate your insanely gorgeous throne anyway, I’m going to set you up with cozier accommodations. Guards! Unchain the prince and take him down to Dungeon Level B. Cell 842. And throw in some extra rats.”
“Do your worst, Briar,” Liam said as a pair of guards unshackled him from the throne and began to haul him away. “Go ahead and try to wear me down. You’ll never get me to say ‘I do’ at that wedding.”
“Oh, I will. I have ways of getting people to do what I want,” Briar said with assurance. “And after the wedding, it will be even easier,” she added, almost to herself.
As Liam was dragged away, Briar lounged back in her throne and thrust her arms out to either side. “Buff me!” she commanded.
Two servants rushed to her and vigorously began shining her overlong fingernails with baby seal pelts.
Liam was led down a gorgeously tiled corridor, the walls of which were festooned with ribbons of spun bronze. The people of Avondell prized ornamentation and beauty above all else. Absolutely nothing in the palace was allowed to look plain or ordinary. Even the soldiers in Avondell were natty dressers: The two guards escorting Liam wore blue suede jackets and silver pin-striped pants. On their way to the stairwell, they passed a cleaning boy who was hard at work sweeping.
“Don’t step in the dirt pile,” Liam helpfully warned his captors. As the two guards looked down, Liam quickly reached out, snatched the broom from the cleaning boy’s hands, and bashed it over the heads of his two armed escorts, cracking the long handle in two.
“Aw, man,” the cleaning boy griped. “They make us buy our own brooms, you know!”
“Sorry!” Liam shouted as he dashed away down the corridor. While the two disoriented guards struggled to their feet, the fugitive prince zipped around a corner. Straight ahead of him was an open window, an easy path to freedom. But before leaping through it, he paused.
Briar is planning more than just a wedding, he thought. I’ve got to figure what.
As the footsteps of the pursuing guards echoed from around the corner, Liam abandoned the window and darted up the nearest staircase. He’d heard Briar brag about the view from her top-story bedroom, so he headed straight to the upper level. As he dashed down hallways looking for a room that could be hers, he ran past several surprised servants and even a few befuddled guards.
“New prince here,” he announced as he sprinted by and waved. “Just taking a tour of the place!”
He turned down a corridor that dead-ended in a door that was framed by a twisted border of thorny vines and bright red roses. Thank you, Briar, for having just as little subtlety as I’d hoped.
He strode up to the two sentries flanking the door and said, “How goes it, my good men?”
“Um, okay?” one answered.
Liam slammed their heads together, sending both men to the ground. He opened the door and stepped over the unconscious guards into Briar’s room. I’ve got to make this quick, he thought as he glanced around the room. He saw a carved ivory bed, platinum-plated vanity, dress dummies draped in extravagant gowns, framed portraits of Briar doing things she obviously never did (like taming a panther and throwing a spear into the moon). If Briar had some diabolical secret, where would she hide it? he asked himself. Someplace not even her maids would go. But someplace that has special meaning to her. Hmm. What has special meaning to Briar? Briar has special meaning to Briar! “The mirror!”
He dashed to Briar’s full-length dressing mirror, reached behind it, and instantly found the latch to a hidden compartment. “Man, I’m good,” he said as he pulled out what appeared to be the princess’s personal journal. What he saw when he flipped through the pages made him shudder. There was a map, which Briar had labeled “The Kingdoms Fall.” On it, the nations surrounding Avondell had all been numbered and X’ed out. The notes scribbled beside each eliminated nation were as baffling as they were unsettling. Next to Erinthia (#1) was scrawled, “Marry in. Simple enough.” But by Valerium (#2) Briar had written, “King abdicates throne”; and by Hithershire (#3) it said, “Royal family imprisoned.” Liam saw his friends’ kingdoms on the list as well: Sturmhagen—“Army disbanded”; Harmonia—“Scandal ousts king”; Sylvaria—“Monarchs disappear into wilderness.” But none of these events had occurred. Was Briar able to see the future? Or was she planning on making these things happen herself? Was she plotting a takeover?
It made sense, Liam thought. Briar never stopped wanting. And when you already own a kingdom, what is there left to yearn for but more kingdoms? The only question was how she planned to do it. What was the key to her scheme?
He turned the page and saw: “The key is JJDG!”
Well, that sort of helps, Liam thought. But what the heck does JJDG mean?
He kept reading.
“I’m so close I can taste it. It all begins with the wedding. Then JJDG. Then—”
Liam was startled by the sound of footsteps running up the hall outside. He quickly shut the diary and slapped it back into its hiding place behind the mirror as his two frustrated prison guards rushed into the room.
“Here I am, gentlemen,” Liam said, holding up his hands in the air. He was going to have to play along with Briar until he could find out more. “I give up. Take me back to Briar Rose. I’ll do whatever she wants.”
The men grabbed Liam’s wrists and pulled them behind his back. “We’ll give her the message,” said one prison guard. “But you’re crazy if you think we’re not following through on her orders first. She said dungeon, so dungeon it’s going to be.”
“Yup,” said the second guard while holding up a squirming burlap sack. “I’ve got the extra rats right here.”
Liam went quietly this time, and moments later he was thrown into cell 842 on Dungeon Level B, a tiny stone room containing nothing more than a pile of hay on the floor and a few lovely landscape paintings on the walls (this was still Avondell, after all). The guards emptied a bag of live, skittering rats into the cell with Liam and then slammed the iron-bar door shut with a loud clang. A second later, the rats all scampered back out between the bars and ran off down the hall. The guards shrugged and walked away.
“That happens every time,” came a rickety voice from the cell across the corridor. A scrawny older man with a wild, knee-length beard waved to Liam from behind iron bars of his own. A second prisoner, just as hairy and emaciated as the first, stood by his side.
Fig. 6 CREMINS and KNOBLOCK
“They always seem to think the rats will stay in the cells for some reason,” the second man said. “But of course they don’t. If I were that size, I’d have slipped through these bars ages ago. I don’t know why you don’t leave, Kippers.” That last bit was addressed to something sitting on the floor of the men’s cell.
“Is he talking to that piece of straw?” Liam asked cautiously.
“Shhh,” the first man whispered. “He thinks it’s a wiener dog. We’ve been in here a very long time.”
“Hah! You ain’t kidding,” the second man said, picking up the piece of straw and petting it. “You know, I was clean-shaven when they first put me in here. Had a chin so shiny it could light up a room. Ain’t that right, Kippers?”
Wow, these men must have been jailed here since long before Briar Rose’s reign of terror, Liam thought. “What are you two in for?” he asked.
“Attempted assassination,” the first man said. “We’re innocent, of course—but I got tired of saying that after about the eighth or ninth year.”
“Ooh! And now we get to guess why you’re locked up!” the second man hooted, hopping up and down on his calloused feet. “We don’t get to play this game very often; it’s exciting. Okay, lemme see. . . . You’re wearing a cape, so . . . I’ve got it! You’re a cape thief! They don’t tolerate stealing another man’s cape around these parts.”
“Nah, you’re all wrong, Knoblock. Look at him,” the first man countered. “Flowy shirt cuffs, spiffy belt buckle—not to mention that lustrous head of hair. He’s the swashbuckling type. You were doing a stealing-from-the-rich thing, weren’t you, kid?”
Liam shook his head. “I’m sorry, but no. I’m just here for safekeeping until Briar Rose marries me.”
The two old prisoners gaped in astonishment. “Could it be?” the first asked, his frail voice quivering. “Are you the kid from Erinthia?”
Liam took a step closer, peering through his cell door at the other men. “I am Prince Liam of Erinthia. Who are you?”
The prisoners gripped the bars of their cell and howled with glee.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in griffin dung!” the man named Knoblock cried. “Finally!”
“You’ve got to get us out of here,” the other said with desperation.
“Well, if you really are innocent men, I’ll do what I can,” Liam began. “But I’d need proof that you’re not actually assassins before I—”
“Of course we’re not really assassins!” Knoblock hollered. “You were practically a baby! Your father hired us!”
“My father? What are you talking about?”
The slightly more rational of the two men put his hands on Knoblock’s shoulders to calm him down, then said to Liam, “I’m Aldo Cremins. This is Varick Knoblock. We were actors. And good ones, too. We had fantastic careers in the Erinthian theater. People would line up around the block to see us onstage.”
“Cremins and Knoblock. You must have heard of us,” Knoblock said. He dropped into a goofy, bowlegged stance, elbowed his partner, and said in a fake nasally voice, “Hey, Cremins, what’s the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin?”
“I don’t know, Knoblock,” Cremins replied in an equally ridiculous voice. “Please enlighten me. What is the difference between a goblin and a hobgoblin?”
“A goblin will eat your cat,” Knoblock said. “And so will a hobgoblin.”
Both men spun around to face Liam with big smiles and waggling jazz hands. Liam simply stared.
“Did we do that right?” Cremins asked, dropping the silly voice. “I don’t think that was the original punch line.”
“That would explain why it wasn’t funny,” Knoblock said.
“Could you please just finish your story?” Liam asked.
“Well, anyway, we were hot stuff once upon a time,” Cremins said. “But that was all before King Gareth hired us to make sure you won a certain contest.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Liam said.
“You couldn’t have been more than three at the time,” Cremins said. “People from all over the world were showing off their kids here in Avondell so the king and queen could pick a future husband for their baby princess, Briar Rose.”
“Well, of course I know that,” Liam said. “That’s how I ended up engaged to Briar in the first place. But no one helped me win. The royal couple picked me because I saved their lives. That was the most important day of my life—the day I first became a hero. I single-handedly stopped two masked assassins from attacking . . .”
The two men pulled their beards up to cover their faces.
“Oh, man. Two assassins. It was you.”
They nodded.
“You were actors?” Liam asked, his horror growing by the second. “And my father . . . ?”
“King Gareth set the whole thing up,” Cremins explained. “He said it was the only way he could be certain you would be chosen to marry Briar Rose. We always enjoyed a challenge, so we took the job. Of course, Gareth also assured us we’d get away somehow.”
Liam’s mouth hung open as he shook his head silently.
“We also assumed he would have told you about our little charade at some point,” Cremins said. “To be honest, I feel kinda bad for you right now. You look like a kid who just had his pet goldfish served to him for dinner.”
“I’ve based my entire life around that moment,” Liam said, his voice hushed and his words slow. “My first act of heroism was really an act of deception. It’s all a lie.”
“Yeah, we feel all sorry for you and everything,” Knoblock said. “But you’re gonna get us out of here now, right? You’re gonna tell everybody we didn’t do it?”
“You are gonna make sure we’re freed, right, kid?” Cremins added hopefully.
Liam sat down on his pile of hay and said nothing. “Why couldn’t I see it before?” he mumbled as his mind flooded with thoughts of his past escapades, every flub and blunder suddenly seeming like a colossal failure. “So many mistakes . . . I lost to the bandits, to the witch, to the dragon, to Briar, to a ten-year-old boy. . . . I never actually saved any of my friends, did I? In fact, I almost got each of them killed. Several times. Everybody looked up to me and believed in my plan. But my plan didn’t work. I’m no strategist. I’ve based everything I’ve done around a skill I don’t even have.”
“Kid?” Cremins called gently.
But Liam didn’t hear him. “Briar Rose is going to take over the world. I’m the only one who knows about it. The people need a hero. But all they’ve got is . . . me.”
(#ulink_c8c60b4f-8a76-5dd9-8e6d-9f518bbfe8bb)
Planning is an essential skill for any hero. If you begin something and don’t know how to end it, then, well . . .
—THE HERO’S GUIDE TO BEING A HERO
“
o you think they’ll show?” Ella asked. She and Frederic crouched within a small circle of elms outside the back gates of Avondell Palace.
“I hope so,” Frederic said. “I’ve been seeing guests go in through the front gates all morning. The wedding is probably going to begin soon.”
“C’mon, where are you guys?” Ella muttered under her breath as she peered anxiously between the trees.
“Well, whatever happens, these past few days have been quite enjoyable,” Frederic said. “You and I, dashing across the countryside together, holding secret meetings and such. Very exciting, no? Almost makes me wish it didn’t all have to end in a perilous prison break.”
Ella was barely listening. “Look, Frederic, the others are no-shows. You and I have to do this alone.” She patted the sword hanging at her side and saw Frederic tremble slightly. “Take it easy, Frederic. We can—” A figure appeared suddenly between them as if erupting from the very air itself. Ella reacted on instinct, shoving Frederic out of the way and hauling off with a gut punch that knocked the intruder flat on his back.
“Your messages have been delivered, sir, Your Highness, sir,” Smimf wheezed from the grass where he lay.
“Oh, my goodness,” Ella exclaimed. “I’m so sorry!”
“My fault,” Smimf said, holding his belly. “Got to learn not to startle people like that. I did it to my grandmother once, and she reacted the same way. Only she’s got a metal hand.”
A second later, a dappled horse galloped out of the trees, with Duncan at the reins. “Oh, dear!” Duncan cried when he saw Frederic and Ella bent over the fallen messenger. “That boy ran so fast he melted, didn’t he?”
“I’m fine, sir, Your Highness, sir,” Smimf said as Ella pulled him back to his feet.
“Duncan!” Frederic shouted.
“Frederic!” Duncan exclaimed. And promptly fell off his horse. He scrambled to his feet and enveloped Frederic in a hug.
“It’s so good to see you,” Frederic said.
“Likewise,” Duncan replied. “You’re exactly how I remember you. But in different clothes.”
“Thank you for coming, Duncan,” Ella said.
